Stem cell meeting focuses on business

“I don’t look at the companies trying to develop the technologies as competitive today,” Calhoun said. “We need success in our field to create the data, the excitement, the awareness and the enthusiasm for this whole new field.”

Further down the road, health insurers will use this information to decide on reimbursement payments, said Michael Werner, executive director of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. The alliance is one of the meeting’s three sponsors, along with the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, and the state’s stem cell agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

“A lot of insurance decisions are made on actuarial data, so new technologies are sometimes hard to quantify for payers,” Werner said. “What makes regenerative medicine challenging is the same thing that makes it exciting. We’re talking about potentially really high-value products that are going after currently unmet medical needs, and diseases, disabilities and conditions that are currently untreatable.”

The meeting will be held at two locations; the Estancia La Jolla Hotel & Spa and the Salk Institute. More information is available at its website, stemcellmeetingonthemesa.com.